Earlier this week, Saturday Night Liveadded Sasheer Zamata to its cast, the show's first black female cast member in over five years, and now, they've hired two black female writers. LaKendra Tookes and Leslie Jones, who both auditioned during to be SNL cast members last month, have been added to the writing staff, THR reports. Their first show will be the next new episode on January 18th, with host and musical guest Drake, during which Zamata will also make her debut.

With SNL's 39th season coming to a close, we're taking a look at the past season with a series of posts examining the highs, lows, and other memorable moments from the past eight months. Here, we look at the show's shifting tone on race over the arc of this season.

This has not been an easy year for SNL to talk about race. From the moment the show announced its six new cast members — the largest turnover in more than a decade — and viewers noticed that not one of them was a person of color, SNL once again became a target of progressive viewers calling for the cast to [...]

This week, Saturday Night Live hired three African-American women to prominent positions: Sasheer Zamata as a cast member and LaKendra Tookes and Leslie Jones as writers. Zamata is the show's first black female cast member since Maya Rudolph, who departed in 2007, and Tookes and Jones are the show's first black female writers since Vanessa Middleton, who was briefly on the show's staff from 1992 to 1993. It's great to see SNL making more diverse hires, but it's disappointing that producers were shamed into adding the show's first black female writers/performers in years by the recent wave of criticism that came SNL's way for its lack of diversity. Zamata, Tookes, [...]

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